LUDLOW, Mass. - The Hampden CountySheriff's Office is battling a COVID-19 outbreak.
As of Wednesday, a total of 72 employees are out of work due to testing positive.
Twenty-nine inmates are in medical quarantine after testing positive, including 28 justice-involved individuals who are either serving sentences or being held pre-trial at the jail in Ludlow and one person is in medical quarantine at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional facility in Chicopee.
“As we are a representation of the community we serve, we’ve seen our numbers climb over the past couple weeks with more staff testing positive and being sent home as a precaution,” Robert Rizzuto, public information officer for the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office, said in a statement. “We are testing staff and our justice-involved population daily with rapid PCR tests, the most reliable tests available, and we are taking all the same precautions that safely brought us through previous waves of the pandemic.”
The Sheriff's office says no one who has tested positive has required hospitalization and more than 74% of its staff fully vaccinated